"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." Orwell

"Men are so simple of mind and so dominated by immediate needs that the deceitful man can easily find those ready to be deceived."
Machiavelli

"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.." H.L. Mencken

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

And Andrew HATES Hillary!

I've been reading Andrew Sullivan's live blogging, both of the RNC and now the DNC. He's an actual conservative, of which there are few remaining, who, for his many prior years of blogging, has made no secret of his hatred for Hillary Clinton. In this comment he practically preempts my upcoming newspaper column. Would that the "ridiculous" (to quote Sarah Silverman) Bernie dead-enders could think this clearly. Forest/trees, people. Seriously. This isn't beanbag:

8:05 p.m. Here’s one reason I find myself backing Hillary Clinton of all people without a shadow of acaveat:

Yes, I know every day, Trump reveals more about his foul character and authoritarian instincts. But imagine an actual president treating his opponents this way. Imagine Trump having access to the NSA, the FBI, and the IRS. Imagine him warning an opponent that he “knows more about him than he knows about himself”. These are the words of a mob boss, not a politician in a liberaldemocracy.

It is not so much that Vladimir Putin wants Trump to win, so they can divvy up Europe between them. It is that Trump intends to do to American democracy what Putin did to Russia’s fledgling democracy – turn it into an illiberal Potemkin democracy in which the strongman always gets the final say. Trump is not even trying to disguise this agenda. He has told us quite plainly that he will use the powers of his office to persecute his opponents and put them in jail; that he will purge the government of any neutral civil servants; that he will pursue anti-trust action against media challengers; that he will demonize and quarantine a free press; and that he will order criminal acts in themilitary.

Against this threat, his ludicrous “policy” proposals are almost irrelevant. It’s our democracy he threatens. And our way oflife.

For The Sake of My Sanity

Some will know me from my other blog, "Surgeonsblog." Of late I've given over to frothing at the mouth as the world descends into stupidity, and our politics and our citizens seem, in numbers enough to be meaningful, unable to see it. So for now I'm leaving surgery writing behind, if for no other reason than to defuse and diffuse my unrelenting sense of doom, and with no expectation of making a difference. These are things that, to me, are obvious. Except that, apparently, they aren't.

RWS™

RWS™: For those who drop by here in the middle, and wonder what it means: it's my shorthand for Right Wing Screamers, which includes such a long list it's tiresome to type it. (I distinguish these blowhards from thoughtful conservatives, of whom I sort of take it on faith that there must still be some.) You know who I mean: Palin, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Breitbart (RIP), Malkin, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, Doocey (more of a drooler than a screamer), Hewitt, Goldberg, Gingrich, Kristol, Scarborough (+/-), Bachmann, Inhofe, Bond, Broun, Boehner, Kelley, Santorum, Cain. To name but a few. Behold them in their unrepentant disregard for reality: the RWS™